


Haven't You Heard (I'm Not Yours Anymore)

by blanchtt



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Other, POV Lesbian Character, Pre-Canon, Pre-Helsinki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 23:03:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10545838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanchtt/pseuds/blanchtt
Summary: There was no choice at DYAD. Not really. Even she could admit that.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sarahshelena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahshelena/gifts).



> A quickwrite on Rachel.

 

 

 

There was no choice at DYAD. Not really. Even she could admit that.

 

In the beginning, there were blood draws, a cursory knock at her bedroom door that did not ask to be let in as much as announce it _would_ come in. There had been schoolwork to be completed, failure inconceivable, and stiff dresses to wear, an image of anything less than immaculate prohibited. And, worst of all, there had been Leekie to mind – the man behind the curtain.

 

But Rachel had known enough even then to only seethe silently, and made the most of her situation, until no choice had become her choice, blood freely given as she’d taken her place at the very top of DYAD. There was no denying her beginnings, but she would make who she was more important than what she was.

 

And it had been very easy to do, and even easier not to feel, until she had remembered.

 

There were, other than herself – fortuitously, regrettably – few women among them. Even in the twenty-first century, the hard sciences still skewed male. She'd become aware, a feral crawling of skin up the nape of her neck, that eyes lingered on her now in a way they previously had not. And alone in her room at night, she’d run her hands over herself, cupping curves and drawing fingers through slickness, and wondered if other women were so soft, so smooth, so warm, and had decided she would very much like to find out one day.

 

But she’d kept that flame at a smolder, and focused. The faces that gathered around the long, cold table for board meetings were more grey and ancient than Leekie himself. But there was one man, new and younger than the rest, who greeted her with a smile that she’d seen before.

 

He wanted something from her, and the disgust bitter on the back of her tongue hazarded a likely guess at the changing nature of what exactly it was. But Rachel smiled thinly, shook the hand he offered, and bade Ferdinand goodbye, parted before she could be dismissed openly by Leekie, and knew somehow two things:

 

  1. He would be watching as she walked away.
  2. That a sway to her hips as she walked away – childishly coquettish and utterly stupid, but _effective_ – would circumvent anyone who would dare keep her from doing as she saw fit.



 

It had worked, of course, but it had been like setting a trap for a very stupid animal – there had been almost no fun in it at all, for Ferdinand was clearly besotted with the idea of her, to the point were she’d weighed almost nothing at all, yet as they'd kissed she'd shrugged off his pawing hands, straddled his waist and found to her pleasant surprise that he’d let her pin him.

 

She'd expected the rendezvous to be more distasteful, more laborious,  _beneath_  her. Yet all she had to do was raise a brow, grasp harder, and Ferdinand’s cocky smile had cracked just for a moment, and she'd relished in his breathless grunt as her nails had dug hard into the tender skin and tendons of his wrists.

 

"I want Veera Suominen dead," she’d said calmly, after, and Ferdinand, slack and satisfied without having hardly even needed to be  _touched_ , had promised her that.

 

And so, an arbitrarily-assigned and clinically-observed birthdate having already faded quickly from memory, she’d realized she’d forgotten – and perhaps Leekie, old and male, had too – that she was a woman now, and that even lacking choices, being a woman was much more useful than being a girl.   

 

 

 


End file.
